Amid sweeping military reforms announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing is planning to build a naval facility in the outpost of Djibouti, East Africa, to strengthen its counter-piracy and peacekeeping efforts, officials say, RT reports.

“China’s proposed naval facility in Djibouti will boost its counter-piracy and peacekeeping efforts“

The outpost, in the tiny former French colony bordering Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea, is also the United States’ only military base on the continent, used as a launching pad for its counter-terrorism operations and drones program in the region.

China is in talks with Djibouti’s government to build the “military supporting facilities” which officials say will not serve as its “military base.”

The facility will only provide “logistical support” to fuel, rest and re-supply Chinese Navy ships in the strategically vital Horn of Africa.

It will help China’s navy and army to participate in UN peacekeeping operations, carry out escort missions in the waters near Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, and provide humanitarian assistance.

The announcement comes as Beijing prepares to play a greater role in the world by modernizing its military and navy, and making significant contributions to UN peacekeeping all over the globe.

Currently, China is a major provider of peacekeeping troops to Africa, where it has huge economic interests, having invested some $40 billion in the continent over the last 15 years.

Beijing also faces public pressure to protect its citizens overseas, especially after four Chinese were killed by terrorist groups in Syria and Mali last week. It may also need to evacuate its nationals as it did in Libya in 2011 and Yemen in March.

At the same time, Beijing is pushing to build-up a so-called “blue-water navy” able to operate in oceanic waters with a global reach.

Over the past few years, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has commissioned its first aircraft carrier, “Liaoning,”originally laid down in 1988 for the Soviet Navy.

Similar naval programs to build state-of-the-art warships and nuclear submarines are also underway.

A former colony of France, Djibouti already hosts the United States’ only African permanent military base at Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport.

Called Camp Lemonnier, it accommodates the Pentagon’s African Command (AFRICOM) and is used for CIA drone operations. It has killed some 3,000 people, mainly civilians, according to the Economist[and the real sources of first hand information (*) – see further below].

Djibouti is a gateway to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, and has been used by international navies – including China’s – as a base for anti-piracy from neighbouring Somalia.

Voracious Chinese demand for Africa’s resources (oil and gas from Sudan and Ethiopia, agricultural land from Kenya and Zambia, rare earth from Congo or Somali fish for example) will cry for Chinese protection of the extraction of the products. This is why the Chinese navy now places itself in that strategic position. A bit of close-up and candy spying against each other among the “super-stupid-powers” will make life interesting at Camp Lemonier, and we must not forget that the French, who stole that territory from the Afar and the Issa people in the first place, are still there.

… and “ship-piracy”, in form of Somali fishermen defending their waters, will return, if the again dramatically increased illegal fishing by foreign vessels will not stop. The monstrous Spanish tuna-haulers are back as are the Thai shape-shifters without any licence and even Iranian vessels poach Somali fish ad libidum under the closed eyes of EUNAVFOR, whose pushed creation as “European Navy” was one of the key reasons why the EU was not willing to help in Somali defences of their waters earlier. The EU and other navies not only allowed the problems of fish-piracy by international poachers to escalate and to reach unbearable levels, but out-rightly fostered real ship-“piracy” to develop as response, and used that complex problem then for their own development and manoeuvres by convincing tax-payers that it would be necessary to stop “Somali piracy”.

No, these navies could just prevent poaching-vessels with their own nationals on board (don’t get confused and don’t fall prey to the flag-circus concerning the ships) to enter the 300nm Continental Shelf Zone and the 200nm territorial Zone (not just EEZ) of the Somali waters – and stay out of it altogether. But no, the mainstream media are forced by the powers-that-be to call it still piracy when illegal Iranian fishing vessels are held for their crimes. Yes, such is maybe not that form of justice, which shiny-shoe legal-eagles of the West would like to see, but justified and more just than the murderous drone strikes of the USAmerican governance such measures are in any case. (*).